


Blame it on the Lights

by cristianoronaldo



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 23:56:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5184542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cristianoronaldo/pseuds/cristianoronaldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>college au drabble not even really a story</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blame it on the Lights

**Author's Note:**

> never really specified who the characters are but just use your imagination

It’s something that can never happen, and they know it can never happen, and it’s the impossibility of the situation that they love. It happened one night like this: “You love what you can’t have” and he drunkenly stumbled forward, waving his hand in the air, saying something with his whole chest full of that terrible feeling: “I can have you.” 

It’s the having-ness that he loves. That quality of being had -- and of having -- from afar. As long as you keep us far apart, as long as we sit on that bridge and don’t speak, as long as I pass the cigarette to you and that’s the only way our lips touch. They blame it on the fact that they don’t exist, not really anyway, not without liquor and heavy breathing and the blurry vision that comes with the night. Not without the unfurling of smoke; that kind of breath - the only way they know they’re alive. That’s what they blame it on: the impossibility of loving sober. 

If smoking is breathing and drinking is consuming, they breathe and consume like raw animals, and they are alive in the falsest sense. They love in the falsest sense. What’s at the bottom of a dirty red solo cup is more valuable than the way they dance at the bar, the lights, the way they sit very far apart in the car and don’t look at one another. And they speak through the driver, making a joke to him to make the other one laugh. They laugh and converse through the wheel and the speed - sixty miles per hour, talking fast. 

There is no touching on the way back to where he sleeps. They wait, speaking sometimes, watching TV. It lights up their faces, and they think beautiful in the darkest parts of their hearts. These are drunk thoughts; these are high thoughts; these are only things we mean when we’re too fucked up to know why we came home together. 

But he doesn’t want to burn bridges, and fucking is burning, so they burn alone instead of together, and it makes more sense this way because they have always been alone when they are not breathing or consuming. It’s the loneliness that drives them to spit smoke in the sky, and it’s the sudden appearance of consequences that pulls them together one night when it happens like this: a knock on the door, clearing out the room, bleary-eyed college students trying to explain why their room stinks of vodka and weed. 

If feeling came first, they would admit it. If feeling came first, they would know. They would peer at each other from across a table and sip fireball from coffee cups instead of skillfully arranging a deck of cards around a can of beer and communicating like this: through a driver, through a card game, facing off across a ping-pong table and trying not to look too hard, sending texts they regret, sending texts everyone hears about in the morning. 

Because that’s who they are. That’s the root of all this, isn’t it? You’re fucked up and I’m fucked up, and I just want the liquor on your lips, not the feeling behind it. If alcohol was charged with feeling, maybe their insides wouldn’t be so numb. You’re too young to be this fucked up; you’re too young to be sitting in a hospital bed, explaining to your parents that you drank too much that’s all you just drank a little too much and your insides are splattered on your outside because you drank just a little too much. 

It happened one night like this: “You want what you can’t have,” and he stumbled forward because feeling came first, but a hand to the chest stops him, a gentle push to guide him back against the wall. This time the reply is different: “I don’t want to fuck around” but it’s only a dream and the reply never changed, not really. It’s only a dream because in the morning they’re both sitting in class still drunk from the night before, watching the powerpoint and the laser pointer, and that’s how they sober up, in the morning when they’re forced to breathe fresh air. 

And he must be doing something wrong because at night he’s in his bed and he’s thinking about a place that isn’t his bed, and in his mind’s eye, the hand pressing against the pillow isn’t his hand at all. When he restlessly brushes against the wall, it’s not the wall at all, and he struggles to understand why something can take him so fully, so completely, why a feeling can fuck him over when he’s numb. 

But comprehending is bullshit so they go home from the bar together, and they communicate through a driver. They go home from the bar together and they’ve shared a drink and they’ve shared a dance, but they go and they watch TV like good, good friends, and they remain that way for a long time until people talk. People are talking and feeling doesn’t come first, so he switches the TV off and goes to bed. He lives to see his breath in the air.


End file.
